


falling is the only way to move forward

by sventheolsen



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Cat Grant has little patience for Jimmy Olsen, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kara is clueless, Love Triangle, Rough Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 12:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7508761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sventheolsen/pseuds/sventheolsen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>!“You made me. Now undo me.” Post Red K, Supergirl deals with the psychological effects of harming everyone she loves. Cat Grant agrees to help. Meanwhile, James steps up his role into Kara’s life as a companion and more. Kara begins to feel the split between Supergirl and Assistant Danvers slowly fraying. Supercat endgame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cat Grant hated cliches.

In fact, she hated them so much, she traded her whole life in them. From the Bitch, the Good for Nothing Blonde Reporter to Perry White’s Second Chance, the Courageous Cunt - her lip curled in the last alliteration, uttered by an unusually vitriolic ex-husband in the divorce settlement proceedings. Cliches were the danger of a single story, entitled with the intent to erase her life’s work and carefully disguised tears and shed blood. Yet in a single story arose the power to choose what to conceal, and what to reveal. Cliches were a mask she trades in each day, essential as each byline written by the `Tribune `in the past twenty three years. 

Funny how the walking, gloriously muscled, hair-billowing cliche of Supergirl wooshed into her life when her empire seemed on the verge of crumbling. Supergirl, who was impossibly, innately good. She seemed like the perfect solution, to both Catco sales and to National City’s slowly dimming splendor.

She likes to dismiss the other smaller voice niggling in her mind, of the other cliche she had helped foster in the past two years, the Sunny Assistant, oblivious of her male colleagues’ infatuation and dedicated to her every impossible whim. 

She paused her ruminations, the continuous thoughts really a luxury considering the aftermath of what had happened to her. She grasped the now-lukewarm scotch in her fingers, her mouth dry as she remembered.

Supergirl, her superheroine, shoving her into a three hundred blood-curdling storied freefall, picking her up merely centimeters from her own death. Her own lips thinned. 

She remembered thinking, “What now?”, after her attempted attacker roughly dropped her on the ground. In the throng of people, amassing around her, murmuring, amidst the sirens screeching faintly in the distance, she registered a sound close that of her heart breaking. If not Supergirl, then who? 

Cat Grant was a purveyor of stories, she reaffirmed herself. She was a conduit through the greatest human tragedies, the smallest of sacrifices, and the rare, worthwhile glimpses into joy are amplified through the ten million screens situated in each household. Beyond that, she wasn’t a good person. She never lied herself to be above that. Supergirl was the moral one, she pushed the Most Powerful Person in National City to support a cause, to make a difference, to be good.

Before, Cat remembered, choking, Supergirl destroyed that all by herself. 

“I did.” A voice, usually bold and mixed with steel and gold, now dimunitive. Cat started, the glass slipping out of her fingers and her frame shaking. 

Of course, before Cat could blink the glass, instead of reaching its own demise, is lifted carefully onto her desk. Cat looks down, steepling her fingers and willing her face to not betray any emotion.

She felt the ghost of her shadow coming closer. “I did destroy everything myself.” A gulp before she continued,that even Cat’s not-so-superhearing could pick up. “I destroyed your trust, I-I almost destroyed you, I…”

This wasn’t Supergirl, Cat desperately tried to remind herself. This was still that poisoned, hate-driven being that occupied her body. “Miss Grant, I almost destroyed what we have.”

A sharp intake of breath. Cat finally wills herself to look up, to look at the otherworldly creature. Her lips trembled at the sight of Supergirl, her eyes blown black in sadness and self-loathing. 

“Who am I to you?” She lets out, surprised by the assertiveness in her voice. The other woman lifts her chin up, confusion radiating from her frame. 

A tense silence. Cat wonders in the ensuing ten seconds, whether she should have called Carter, sent the towncar to him and smoothed his mussed, sleepy hair after all. Whether she should have conveyed her last wishes to her stonehearted mother. 

The other girl, sensing the fear quaking Cat’s heart, gasps and falls to her knees. “I am yours.” She swears fiercely, her eyes looking even more desolate. “P-please. Cat, I will never do anything to hurt you again. Punish me, do whatever you want, I don’t care.”

Hearing that all-too familiar hesitation, that easy loyalty in the words of Supergirl, Cat stepped back, speechless. “Kara.” Despite the upward inflection in her voice, she knew it to be true. 

This was her life’s work, laughing at her surely. To merge two perfect, superate archetypes in her mind. Supergirl, Sunny Danvers, young, sweet Kara- they came together in her mind to produce chaos in her already unstable mind. “Tell me who you are.” She orders, standing, hip to eye-level to the most powerful girl on Earth currently kneeling at her feet. 

Don’t lie to me, is the hidden message conveyed through her fierce glare. 

“My name is Kara Zor-El, first lady of the Honorable House of El, the last Kryptonian woman in existence.” Cat waited, her heading cocked to the side as if knowing more. “I-I am also Kara Danvers, cousin to Kal-El, adopted by a loving family in Midvale and… also your assistant.”

“Great assistant lately.” Cat sniped, unable to convey her betrayal and abandonment, Superheroics be damned. Kara’s face fell, but shuttered the hurt. 

“And stop doing that!” She snapped. “Stop taking in every terrible thing I say. God knows all that repression lead you to make me dangle off a roof.” Cat winced, despite herself. Maybe a bit too soon to make jokes about it. 

A matching wince was on Kara’s face until her face cleared, clearly heeding her advice. Cat’s heart clenched despite herself. Young, trusting Kara, always obedient. Her assistant wasn’t disguised too far deep in that red-and-white costume. 

An idea morphed in her mind. Cat leaned forward, almost breath-to-breath with the other woman. Kara’s chest was constricted, as if she could not inhale the tiny, pointed puffs of breath near her nose. “You will do whatever I say, won’t you.”

Kara closed her eyes, as if expecting the worst. “Yes,” she admitted, defeated by her own devotion. “Anything, Ms. Grant.” The older woman withdrew away, face burning. 

She stood once again, in her own version of a power position, her knuckles nestling her chin. “Get up.” She muttered.

Kara scrunched her brow. “Ms. Grant?”

“I said, get up Kara, we surely don’t have all day. I have an empire to upkeep.” Trepid, she stood up. 

“Push me.” Cat spoke, eyes challenging. 

“What?!” Cat stepped forward. “Push me,” she repeated in an even tone. “Push me right now, against that wall. You know which one.” She threw a casual glance to the wall behind her. 

“I can’t hurt you, C-Cat-” Supergirl wrested back into her heroic tone, cut off abruptly by Cat’s dismissing hands. 

“You’re not going to, god. At least if you do, it’s with your permission. Now push me.”

Another tense silence, but Cat was surer now that her life wasn’t hanging in the balance. Without speaking, Supergirl scooped her up, as if she was a five year-old. As her back hit the wall, Cat wrestled until her legs surrounded her athletic frame. “I was expecting more force.” She said accusingly.

Kara’s face softened from her stoic default. “I don’t want to hurt your b-mmph!” Lips crashed into hers hungrily, pressing so hard and with such anger Kara’s tight lid on her superstrength almost slipped. She pressed back, feeling fire pool in her belly and supernova explosions in her closed eyes. She barely registered the pair of legs wringing a tighter hold on her, pulling her closer. 

Cat wrenched her lips away, panting fiercely. “Tell me,” she gasped. “Tell me what you said earlier.” She dove forward.

“I-” One more searing kiss. “Am-” A gasp as Cat bit unexpectedly hard. “Yours.” Their eyes open at the same time, and it’s almost lyrically perfect that a thunder strikes somewhere. 

“Always, Cat.” She breathed, forehead pressed to forehead. Cat feels something dropping in her stomach. She holds statesque still, but inside she is raging. 

She wants to be so angry at the heroine for giving her this. Kara, plain old Kara, was the kind of woman if she didn’t live within the constraints of her power, she would have dropped to her knees and submitted. Supergirl was something else entirely. “You can’t.” Cat feels the droplet of moisture and is irked to find out it’s her tears, of all things. 

The other woman’s eyes shift to their natural undercurrent of empathy. With that damaging look, she is reminded of sobering, bleak reality, the one that involved her own fragility, her age, and oh god, Carter- 

She assumed her knees were going under but she notices faintly that her superhero was dropping her legs onto the ground. She wobbles slightly, finding her ground.

“Super girl,” she addresses her by the name she gave her. “Please leave.” She thinks of all the meanest, cutting things she has ever said to Kara and concentrates them on those two words. 

Kara frowns slightly, but turns. Again, her heart clenches as she sees her shoulders, impossibly broad and stiff. 

She stands there for a long time, peering into the sky at the figure soaring into the clouds

\--

James paused in the midst of his tirade about CatCo employees, noticing that his companion, usually kind and attentive, was barely focused on him. 

“Kara, are you OK?” He offered, concerned. The woman blinked twice, cheeks shaded a slight pink at being caught from her reverie. A small frown appeared on her face. 

“Do you hear that?” She shifted her glasses nervously, as if in anticipation. James stared at her, responding slowly. “Uhhh. No. Listen, if there’s-”

“There it is!” Kara blurted, almost starting from her chair. “She’s pacing again. Thirteen steps right, twelve right.” Kara began mimicing her words, as if demonstrating the action. James nodded, still confused and beginning to doubt Kara’s peace of mind. “Then she stops.” A pause. She brings her hands in frustration. “This is when she calls me. This. This is her Keira pace, when she wants an Andean mate-infused cold-pressed tealatte, or something like that. But do you know what I hear?”

James, still stunned, shakes his head in response. “Nothing! I hear nothing,James.” They both think to the same conclusion. Cat Grant is holding back. From her right hand,which is even more surprising given the lengths Kara has gone to show her commitment. 

“Do you think it might have been because of Supergirl? And you know, the Red-K….” James replies, anticipating a wince. He only receives a quick and almost forced shrug at that. He presses on. ‘Or, after the Siobhan incident, maybe she's having trust issues.” 

Kara shoulders slump lightly at that, face turning slightly down. He steps forward, capturing her chin. She looks ten years younger. He remembered Clark’s first description of his cousin, young, vulnerable, impossibly bright. He could see the hurt reflected in her gaze, and he broadens his stroke into the gentle curve of her jaw.  
“You will always be needed. “ James reassures her. “If not by the most powerful person in National City, plain old photojournalist Jimmy needs you too.”

“You're so much more than that.” Kara whispers, pressing further into his palm.  
James smiled. 

\--

“Ridiculous!” The polysyllable, intended as a sharp admonishment, come out far louder than the executive wanted.  
`  
“Uh, Ms. G-Grant??” The younger boy stammers, crossing his legs together in an awfully convincing fashion of a dog trying to not pee. 

“Can you explain to me, Witt, why is it a simple coffee order ridiculously turned upside down?”  
“B-because ma’am, I'm not s-supposed to do this, it's Kara’s job?” The almost feminine uptick in the computer wizz’s voice would be comical. 

Cat snarled. “Keira is not a computer programmer genius who hacked into Dirks computer to prevent my eviction, is she?”

“Ms Grant.” The familiar, peppy voice enters the room, diffusing the tension. 

Cat wants to rip the infuriatingly bland, pleasant smile on her face. “I have your favorite. Noonans.” She offers helpfully. 

Cat stares at the offending beverage, swivels around and sits at her desk throne, exhaling slowly. 

After a few tepid moments, she waves off Winn. Kara steps forward, her shadow pulling Cat back into the last time they were alone. 

She's still smiling, in that pure, megawatts manner and Cat is surprised she hasn't gone blind from it after two years. “Cat,” she says teasingly, walking forward. The other woman starts at the blatant use of her first name, to suggest that they were, they were more-

Oh. When she looks up, she doesn't expect the steel to resurface once more. Cat felt her foundations giving in from under her. 

“Keira.” She responds, so pointed and loud that it lands several pairs of eyes curiously peering into the office. “Do you know what this is?”

Kara blinks, unsure at the double entendre. “Ms. Grant?”

She rises, her miniature frame stiffening, her Eve’s apple bobbing. “This is a publicly listed company with the IPO size of a small African nation’s GDP, that outstripped the sweaty, crowded backhole of the Planet in less years than Carter learned his alphabet. This was my opportunity, Keira, and I took it and built this building into the clouds. I suggest you take the same.” 

She didn’t realize this, she didn’t think that she would be standing so close to the other woman, almost breathing the same scent. Cat closed her eyes. Thunder and rain. 

“What, Ms. Grant?” Kara barely wavered, aware of the rest of employees who had given up half-staring and were intently looking into Cat’s blatant intimidation. 

“A promotion.” Her lips curled and abruptly swivelled around. “The pay won’t increase much, actually it won’t increase at all. You can do what you want.” She steepled her fingers.

“What?” She repeated hazily. Cat was struck by the overwhelmingly innocent, young human standing in front of her. 

“It won’t offer much.” Cat surmises. “But what it would offer, is absolutely essential when I was at your age. More days of leave. Stability, and the promise of upward trajectory if you prove your salt. More than enough to build a family, if you so choose.” Her spiel, confident as it was, tapered off in uncertainty. She shook her blond curls and stared intently into the younger protege’s eyes. 

This was good. Another way to cement her professional, working relationship with the younger woman. Reaffirm her role as the mentor and frank advisor in her life, although the maternalistic tones made her teeth grind involuntarily. 

The small furrow of Kara’s brow smoothened and slowly morphed into a smile that threatened to split her face.

“Let’s not schedule mani-pedi spa sessions, now.” Cat replied dryly to the gasped “Yes.” as Kara clasped her fingers in affirmation. She also lifts a finger to prematurely end the gushing torrent of words that threatened to leave Kara as she opened her mouth. 

“Yes, yes, I am your inspiration and role-model, etcetera. I have heard this all before.” Although Cat realizes that it was Supergirl who had given that speech prior. She covers up the jolt from her admission by resuming her position on her throne, impatient for her former assistant to disappear. “Get packing. Olsen will show you the wing.” 

Kara bites her lip, eyes shining still but acquiesces, and leaves.

The squeals and hugs of laughter that erupt fifty feet away between Kara and Witt do leave her smiling inwardly. 

-

Kara barely dodged the flying potsticker, although she realized with dismay that she should have caught it with her mouth. 

“For a girl who spends half of her government issued salary on take-out, you waste a lot of it.” She chides, already holding a handful of soba noodles in her “S”-branded steel chopsticks. 

“Yet you seemed fine with getting sponsored by General Changs, huh baby sister?” Alex mockingly pointed her significantly less snazzy wooden pair towards her chest. She blushed lightly. “That’s still deflecting the point! I can’t believe you kissed him!” Her voice rises several octaves higher in a mocking imitation of the sorority sisters both of them despised in NCU.

Kara smiled equal parts terrified and joyful, in the way Alex knew either related to their long-dead puppy Zor-El, or an unexpectedly successful romantic overture. 

“It happened after I got the promotion.” Alex remembers the excited, hushed words of her heroic sister as she gushed about the upgrade. Personally, she was equal parts surprised and proud that she received it, but Alex knew this was also a deliberate move on her boss's part. They knew that Kara would never leave Cat Grant’s side without significant incentive.  
Alex was relieved that this was her way of letting go without pushing her to choose between her two identities. With RedK, Hank’s Martian escapades, Kara had been increasingly involved in the DEO. 

Alex knew which place she belonged to more. 

“God, how was his tongue like? And his fingers, were they better than snapping photos for Supergirl?” Alex mocked mercilessly, her hands slowly creeping towards the last potsticker. Kara smacked her centimeters shy of grabbing the piece. “Yes,” she admitted quietly, her eyes taking her to that faraway land of things Kara was imagining that Alex definitely didn’t need to know. “Ohh-kay, I don’t need to know more of your sexcapades.”

Another smack, a bit too rough. “Ow!” Alex rubbed her DEO-issued neoprene shoulder. 

“It’s not- not about about sex!” Kara blurted, face growing hot. “At least, not yet. I wasn’t thinking of him anyways. I was thinking about Ms. Grant.”

The older sister rolled her eyes. “Really, Ms. Grant can’t even escape your love life? Not that it’s overflowing with sordid details.”

Kara’s cheeks blazed even more, as if caught. Alex remembers idly the first time Kara proved to be a terrible liar. That particular brand of embarrassment of her Mom seeing a half-naked Bruce Wayne on top of her fifteen year old self (she remembers Kara’s hastily gathered excuse of “it’s for research!”) makes her shake her head. 

“Alex.” She says, all steely and worried, jerking her out of her train of thought. Alex can see her beginning to change into her Supergirl suit. “I’ll call up Hank.” She assures, already grabbing the intercom attached to her hip. 

“No! No, I need to visit someone. No superhero business.” Kara cringed. “Okay, not really. I’ll- I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“Let me just call Hank and - Kara?” Before the button is being pushed, her sister slides through the window and shoots to the sky. 

She sighed. If only she used that superpower at fifteen. 

\-- 

Carter just said his “I love you, and don’t stay up too late, Mom” before she puts the phone on the cradle and hears a sharp swoop. 

Her stomach drops. “You know, Commissioner Gordon had some ideas I could steal. I thought at first I could get a huge “S” emblazened into the sky whenever I need you. But now that hardly seems necessary.” 

Kara walks forward, all stoic and muscles broadly on display. She wonders whether she stuffs that suit. Clearly that quarterback frame had to go through some changes before fitting into a Size 2 at a work. “You used her.” Supergirl accuses, eyes boring into her. 

Cat has used so many people at different stages of her life that she barely bats an eyelash. “Excuse me?”

“Kara. You used her today.” Cat blinked at her owlishly, considering if the situation had to get that absurd that Supergirl resorted to third person. 

 

“You want her to get away from you.” Supergirl states, as if it weren’t painfully obvious. Cat refuses to answer, pointedly tapping her pen on to the table to feign impatience. 

“Still don’t realize how this is at all related to you, Supergirl since these are my personal decisions.” Cat is adamant. If Kara wanted to interrogate her about her assistant as if she was a different person, two can tango. 

Kara stepped back at her official title, thrown back at her so harshly from its creator. 

“Cat,” she tries, but the woman pointedly stared at her table, as if willing the superhero to leave with her ignorance. 

She steps out, sighing in defeat. As her left foot strikes the ledge, ready to leave, she pauses. The other woman looks up at her intently. 

She coughs, semi-awkwardly, turns and outstretches her hand. “Come with me.” She says, confident like the Kryptonian royalty she confessed to be hardly three days before. 

Cat stared. Apparently, all sorts of insane decisions were being taken today whether she likes it. She considers, Carter halfway across the city, probably already having snuck two Superman comics into his bed, pretending to sleep. She sighs. The ride could work, she rationalizes, standing two steps behind Kara.

“Kara Zor-El,” she instructs. “Take me home.” Kara smiled, the pure, good one that blurs the distinction between the woman she pointedly locked away from her life and the idiotic, heroic one on the cusp of taking her heart. She exhales. 

\--

Oh. She thinks faintly to herself, grasping the superhero transporting her across the stars. She blinks from the whiplash as they duck satellites, the blare of their city slowly fading into the night fog. 

She gets it now, the torrent of words filling her brain a safeguard from the pure panic of being ten thousand feet in the air. 

She gets why the poorer imitation of women as wilting, fragile flowers can be so damn attractive, why the close proximity of a powerful, stable protector can surge blood through all parts of her body. Her life right now utterly depended on Kara. She burrowed further into her arms, accidentally nuzzling her nose into the nape of her neck in the process. She felt Kara shiver involuntarily. 

“Where are we?” Cat whisper-shouted, knowing that Kara would read her lips regardless. “Um, we made a detour.” Her pilot replied, her voice a welcoming rumble in her chest. 

Her eyes narrowed and she pulled away from the embrace she quietly was enveloped in the past forty five minutes. “We’re not in danger, are we?”

The other woman, eyes firmly stuck into the horizon, wavered as they glimpsed at her. “Uh, no! No. We’re fine, I just wanted to show you something.” She explained, slowing down and positioning her body more vertically. 

Cat floated to the earth, staggering but relieved to hit solid ground. “Wow,” she exclaimed dryly. “This doesn’t look like central National Borough to me,” she is about to say, but the words die in her throat as she glances up into the stars.

The expanse above her, twinkling and unhindered and never-ending. Huh. “I just wanted to thank you for giving me a view… with this one.” Kara murmurs, her close proximity sending her nerves jolting in overdrive. 

She feels her warmth behind her, close, protective. Safe, She nodded, a quick jerk of her head that might have occurred in superspeed. “I saw us go past Sierra Nevada a while ago,” Cat casually mentions, wondering how far exactly they were from her home. Slight detour indeed. When she turns around, Supergirl is detaching her cape, draping it across the dusty, desert floor. She sits, unusually gracefully. “Join me,” Kara pats her cape, half-smiling. 

Cat wonders if calling an Uber in the middle of the desert was a viable alternative. She gingerly places herself down, still staring at the stars and careful not to brush any limb with her. “Cat,” the other woman intones, and she is half tempted to punch the ‘S’ on her chest for talking to her in that tone. Pointed silence. 

She yelps as her hand is gently (not really that gentle) yanked down, pulling the rest of her body collapsing on to the Maid of Steel’s frame. She huffs and puffs for a few minutes indignantly, Kara smiling wordlessly in response.

When her irritation runs out, she slowly relaxes, and traces figures in the stars with her eyes. 

“I used to find constellations as a kid with my, my father.” Cat clears her throat, half-aware of Kara’s hands raking languidly down her shoulder. “And he’d like the Little Bear the most.”

“Yours?”

Cat shrugged. “The Scorpius. Deadly, beautiful woman. I had goals even at eight.” A decidedly dorky snort erupts from Kara. She smiled, the assistant never too far below the cape and American glory. 

Remembering Kara Danvers stiffens her spine and she deflects her attention back to the stars. “I kissed James.” Kara whispers. 

Something drops. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” The fingers stop their tracing but become gentle rubs down her shoulder. Cat feels unwelcome goosebumps, and sits up on her shoulders. 

“So this is a friendly get-together after work?” She stares at her severely, her best “Ms. Grant” expression gathered. “A few drinks could have sufficed, Keira.” 

Kara’s face falls. “No!” One of many negatives Kara has let out this week, Cat notices tiredly. “No, Cat,” she reaches down desperately to link fingers with the other woman. “No, can we just not talk about this?” She asks bleakly, tugging. 

She hates Kara, she thinks for the thousandth time. She hates how she makes her feel helpless, that she cannot control her own actions around this, this alien. A being who looks so lost but is searching her eyes as if she carried her salvation. She held her breath. 

She doesn’t lie back down, but her silence, less angry this time, is enough of an answer. 

“We would jump onto them.” Kara surmised, looking up at the stars as longingly as she was. “It was called ... “ Her nose scrunched, adorkably. “Highway? Jumping? That’s the loose translation. We would catapult pods towards them and using the sheer solar heat, they would be shoved to another and pushed back, and so on. It was an illegal sport. Kal-El’s uncle loved watching it.” Kara chuckles, fond of her memories of her dead uncle and the planet Cat had only read in short paragraphs Superman would give in Planet op-eds. 

Kara falls silent afterwards, her eyes turning darker and the all-too-familiar shade of guilt. Cat clenches her jaw and gently extricates herself. “Supergirl,” She was relieved to see her snap back into this reality. “Take me home,” she ordered.  
\---

James grabbed the latte, rubbing his eyes. Thanking the barista, he jogging two streets down to CatCo’s headquarters, relieved that he was early enough to miss the bustle of employees streaming in twenty before nine. 

He blinked twice, as he recalled the familiar memories streaming into his mind like sunlight. The sheer joy of Kara being promoted into a position deserving her talent, her almost-too-tight hug that felt right, and the serious expression in her gaze as they stared, lips almost brushing against each other. 

He doesn’t know what compelled him to swoop forward, but he is so glad he did. Kissing Kara… he suppressed a smile. Kissing Kara felt like the past six weeks of Lucy entering, and leaving his life again, making decisions for him, feel worth it. Kara was beautiful and it was hard to suppress how he couldn’t stop staring when a particularly well shone ray of light would land on her golden skin, her lips barely parted mid-breath. Lucy felt like a storm in his heart, still dormant. Kara felt like a hurricane. 

He didn’t want to fuck this up, he decided as he unlocked the key to his apartment last night. That’s why he’s here fifty minutes before work starts, holding her favorite latte. Today, he’s going to try to be her assistant. 

His enthusiasm diminishes slightly when he realizes he’s not the only one there at seven thirty on a Friday morning. The vanguard of the company sits quietly in her throne, absorbed in thought. James walks gingerly ahead, hoping not to be noticed as he walks to the other wing. 

A ruffle of papers send him grimacing, and he turns and gives a respectful nod to Cat, who barely registers, expression unreadable. 

He shrugs slightly and walks ahead, determined to finish his mission.

Three hours later, he is on the way to discussing the Planet-Tribune venture of a joint interview of the Supercousins, when he is tackled unexpectedly. “Whoa,” he gasps, smiling. 

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” Kara gushes, still not letting go of his embrace. James just inhales her scent, fruity and how he’d imagine Met Park on a sunny afternoon. “The flowers? And the cute heart-shaped arranged post-its? And Noonans’ double cheeseburger and latte? “ Kara exclaims a little too loudly, eyes adoring. “It’s like you’re my spirit animal,” she concludes happily, pulling back from her embrace. She shoves her hands in her pockets and fidgets with her glasses shyly. 

“I figured Catco’s best former assistant could get a taste of her own medicine today,” James says fondly. They embrace once more and the whispered promise of more ‘assisting’ that night sends Kara blushing to her roots. He smugly walks into the boardroom.

He gives everyone a customary greeting, to which all but Cat Grant responds to. The rest of the meeting, she also keeps referring to him as “Jimmy,” as he bites his tongue to suppress his exasperation. 

\--

Cat has tried threatening to burn them, to give them away to orphanages, to desist giving pocket money. But the sight of her curly-haired son, eyes glittering and begging her not to ruin them, had lead to the inevitable defeat in another Grant son-and-mother battle.

Instead, she’s resorted to curling into bed next to him, reading comics to him in a pointed tone about the exploits of the “Amazing Adventures of Superman”. Frankly, she thinks that the illustrations are a bit too graphic, and the depiction of females as heavily busted and raucous doesn’t teach her son a thing about respecting women, but she supposes it has rather good, if fictional storylines. 

Supergirl makes an appearance in this one, and Cat’s voice breaks slightly when uttering one of the asininely heroic dialogues. She darts her eyes over to Carter to notice him already slightly snoring, against her side, and she sighs and flicks the lamp away.

A thud, a bit too loud to not be an errant bird but soft enough to not be dangerous, makes her purse her lips. She skulks to her bed and sure enough, on her balcony, was the hero she couldn’t get rid of. 

“You were saving Superman from a large, green-haired monster called the Hulk five minutes ago,” Cat begins dryly, arms crossed. 

Kara smiles, eyes lighting in recognition of the comic issue. “I’ve always wanted to be a comic book hero. The Avengers and Watchmen were my everything through high school.” There it is, the casual divulging of personal facts as if they were going to open up a talk show together. 

Cat’s arms remain firmly crossed. “It’s eleven thirty, Ms. Danvers.” She barks, tearing the the facade. “We both have work tomorrow. What do you need?”

Kara is taken aback by both the use of her personal name and the request. “Oh,” She blinked uncertainly, floating up as if preparing to leave. “I didn’t really come for anything, I can just-”

“Don’t.” She pinches her bridge. “Just don’t. Can you be good for something, at least?”

Supergirl nods in that stoic, ‘I will save you from an alien army in an instant’, way. Cat huffs and throws the covers back. “Could just…” She trails off, suddenly losing strength. Supergirl could already be attached, for all she knows. She could be Olsen’s girlfriend and overstepping some serious lines. 

Her skin chills as the ruffle of sheets occur and Supergirl, the most powerful woman in National City, fluffs her pillows and readies herself to lay next to her. “I sleep better when someone is breathing,” Cat clarifies, making it impersonal enough to not make it about her. 

Kara nods, turning on her side. She absently traces one finger down her shoulder, just like she did two nights ago. Cat’s skin itches with the strain of wanting more, of having a little sip but already feeling parched. 

“He likes you,” as if discussing Kara’s potential love interests was bedtime conversation.”He really does. And he knows, doesn’t he. Of the Supergirl/Kara thing.” She nods, as if to convince herself. “He’s good.” She decides, although she’s lying through her teeth and hopes the resentment doesn’t pool over into her eyes. She turns and sees the sad, longing creature she saw in the desert. 

Cat may hate many things about Kara, but she hates the abject loss that’s in her eyes sometimes the most. So much so she would do anything to wipe it off, and that’s why she grasps her chin and fuses her mouth with her. She can’t kiss the hurt away, but it would help.

Kara gasps into her mouth and pushes further in, circling her arm around her waist. They kiss for several minutes, and Cat relives the cliches of “losing track of time” as she presses her mouth in comfort again and again to Kara’s. 

“You’re so good, Kara,” She mumbles, torn between pressing kisses onto her neck or kissing the tears that were leaking out of her eyes away. “So utterly, stupidly good.” Kara doesn’t let her talk after that, pressing her mouth more fiercely against her as if willing the world to suspend around them, to freeze so that they could enjoy this one instant together. 

Cat is the one with the human-sized lungs and wrenches away first, breathing from the hollow of her throat. When her gaze focused, Kara burrows her face into her neck, her breath coming out in short, sweet puffs. Cat rubs her fingers down her back, soothing her the way Kara taught her to do so. The dry heaving begins soon after, and Cat with her human-sized superpowers just holds her as tightly as she can, lips brushing against the top of her head. 

Kara’s chest eventually stills, and she’s still absently rubbing her back as she wills herself to sleep. 

(The next morning, she wakes up to a cold bed and not even a note.)


	2. 2

“National Borough?” Alex whispers fiercely to her as Hank briefs the other DEO agents. “We located you in what, the most desired prime estate in the West Coast?” Her younger sister refused to answer, trying out some glowing, armored cufflinks and pointing them as if to shoot an imaginary target.

“Were you having waffles with Cat Grant?” She demands disbelievingly, and Kara abruptly sets the cufflinks down and swivels to her. “Alex, has it ever occured to you,” in a kind tone, that doesn’t beget the sullen expression. “That I just don’t want to talk about certain things?”

“Thing? Cat Grant isn’t a thing,” Alex yells forty - five minutes later, dodging what admittedly looks like a fireball from a red, bruised alien-monster. “Cat Grant is the Queen of All Media.”

Kara swipes the next fireball away from her, expressionless. “Cat Grant is a human being,” she defends, annoyed. “Not the Queen of England,” She back-kicks the alien into a crater, roaring as it falls. 

“Yeah but, “ Alex acquiesces, after Hank sternly reprimands the both of them to keep their personal lives separate from mission time. “You were there at 2am?”

“Why!” Kara squeaks, and Alex muffles a smile, shooing her sister to sit into the sunbed the next room. “Do these things emit Helium gas and why haven’t you been affected?”

“I didn’t kill them,” She says pointedly as she measures her vitals on the screen. “So, Cat Grant,” The groan emitting from inside almost rocks the sunbed sideways.

“We’ll talk about this later.” 

\--

The dreams, Cat supposes are an unfortunate side effect of being Kara Danvers’ pet emotional counselling project. She supposes the overwhelming emotions need to be processed somehow, and certainly her twelve year old son or her fifty five year old house keeper weren't going to help. 

And so her subconscious resorts to little tantalising snippets of a life she may have lived, had she been more foolhardy. 

The sex is the worst part of it, she surmises, one morning after a particularly steamy fantasy. The feel of Kara’s neck, now something she has had the luxury to remember, and she sucks in a shaky breath in the shower, fingers skirting around her clit. She presses it roughly as she remembers the sight of Kara eyes squeezed closed and chest thrown forward in pleasure, her own mouth rounding to an O that pops slightly as she reaches the apex. That frustratingly never comes, and the balls of her feet come down as she descends from a half climax. 

The edge that refuses to be taken off drives her insane, especially in the office when Kara unceremoniously walks into the room as if she bought five million shares of the very same building. Cat scowls. “Supergirl made the morning news, I see,” she greets matter of factly, and the proud glint in Kara’s eyes is her response. 

Cat tries not to stare at the end of the pencil skirt and visualises a naked boardmember. “Ms. Grant, I have the portfolios you want to see and I have the top three picked out already.” Cat waited until the other woman spouted her generic work nonsense and revealed the real reason why she had arrived. “So? “ She crooked an eyebrow. 

Kara is not smiling now, not even with her eyes, but she ventures “I’m sorry,” she mumbles, not dropping the bumbling-yet-endearing assistant act entirely. “There was an emergency.” Her chest heaves, and Cat maximises the level of self-control she could at this moment before she does something imbecilic. 

Before she could respond, she notices the irritatingly patient expression of Olsen behind her, waiting expectantly. “We don’t apologize for our jobs, Kara, unexpected as they might be.” She resumes scribbling signatures on some agreements to launch some young radio jockey’s career, post-Livewire. 

Besides being a go-to Kryptonian therapist, Cat reckons that nothing much will metastasize after this. Certainly not anything remotely resembling a normal relationship, God knows she screwed that up the moment Kara removed her glasses so many months before and stuttered to her ultimatum, half-lying. 

She notices the woman walking out expectantly but pausing at her new assistant’s desk, a young Berkeley graduate who was as efficient as she was expressionless.

Five minutes of tense scribbling later, she calls. “Shi Lin, what did Keira say to you?” 

“She asked for a lunch reservation tomorrow, ma’am.” Shi Lin replies, already putting it into her calendar. Cat’s noted silence is her affirmative. 

\-- 

Supergirl finishes serving five hundred of National City’s homeless and underprivileged by eleven thirty, and Cat’s fingers twitch as she states confidently, in that ridiculous heroic arms-on-hips way, “You don’t need superpowers to help people.” on CatcoTV. 

She hears a gentle thud on her balcony, and she finishes suitably threatening sounding emails and orders Shi Lin to give her a lettuce wrap just in case the Girl of Steel forgets her lunch date. 

Where she expected capes and red boots, she is met with pastel cardigan and twelve-year old glasses. Cat blinks, surprised. “I did book a lunch with you, Ms. Grant.” She rises, grabbing her Hermes and leaving the lettuce wrap on the table. 

Twelve minutes later, Cat Grant saunters out of her private elevator, confident that the younger woman was fifteen paces behind. She starts walking to Noonan’s when she feels a gentle grasp on her elbow. 

“This way, Cat,” Kara tilts her head in the opposite direction, away from the decidedly more classy Downtown NC district, towards Chinatown. 

Cat is surprised to find a mom-and-pop diner tucked away between rows of dim-sum and Korean BBQ restaurants. Kara welcomes the server, an attractive looking blond man warmly, and Cat is irked at the twinge of jealousy in her chest. Still smirking unreadably, Kara sits them down on the fringes. Cat can see her eponymously named skyscraper looming in the distance.

“My sister and I would come here after a particularly bad Calculus class, or a break-up.” Kara explains, ordering a steak, burger and fries, and a roast chicken sandwich, the last only being for Cat. 

Cat shook her head. “Were they prolific?” She asks casually, surprised that she even wanted to know about Kara’s past dating mishaps. The woman blushed slightly, the tint making Cat smile inwardly. 

“N-no,” she fingered a straw awkwardly. Cat drank in the sight of her slender fingers, wondering how they would feel against hers. “There was Bruce, Kelsey, I remained practically a nun throughout high school.” She laughed, a small, auditory version of sunshine. 

“Women too, I see.” Her eyebrow cocked in daring. There it was again, the tension that had sent her shoulders locking and her throat parching. Kara’s smile slowly faded, and Cat was welcomed by the plates being served in front of her. 

“I brought you here,” Kara replies, after being distracted by the mountain of food placed in front of her. “Because I wanted to show you where this all started.” She waves to herself and Cat carelessly, and Cat raises her eyebrows once again.

“My sister, she would be complaining about her latest failure, and while I was tuning her out, I would see the scraper over there,” Her voice switched to an ethereal, awed tone. “I saw that tower, and your name on top of it, and I realized that you’re the only person I wanted to work for.” Her eyes turned as she swivelled diagonally, staring that the building in question. . “A hardworking, talented media queen who was making a difference for women and the thousands of people here. “

Cat’s breath caught in her throat. Kara apparently had no shortage of things to say or do to render her speechless. She placed the fork carefully down, thinking of what to respond. Kara turns around. 

“But what do I know,” Kara retracts, self-effacingly “I’m just a beginner employee, after all.”

“No.” The indignation is immediate. She darts her hand out, places it daringly on top of the younger woman. “I have never…. I have never met a woman who embodied so fully the ethos of what I wish CatCo could be. You are one of our best examples, if distracted at times at work.” Cat praises with faint damnation, but Kara ducks her head down and fidgets with those glasses all the same.

She tries to push the boundaries once again. “So, these are made of plastic?” She lets out one of her curiosities, peering at the spectacles. Kara laughs slightly hysterically, and stutters. “They’re coated with lead,” she admits, after Cat’s unimpressed stare. “I-I need to work on denying my identity, huh.” She crosses her hands, Supergirl resurfacing again.

“Yes,” She says, a touch too kindly. “Especially if you’re going to begin dating publicly, although I imagine James knows.” She brings him up whenever she feels her tenderness is showing a bit too much, and the pain is well worth the distance re-established. 

But instead of giving in, Kara stares at her intently, that determination entering her gaze. This wasn’t good. The last time she had looked like that at, her, she’d ended up picnicking in the desert. 

Before Cat can say something, she notices a black figure swooping down. It’s too large to be a raven, and the scream is only halfway out of her lungs when Kara is grabbed away. 

\---

Winn loves the DEO supersystem of computers. The first time he was let loose on the interface, he let out an almost feminine squeal, as he saw the layers and layers of code scrolling in front of him, vertical like Kanji script and beyond simple binary parameters. 

He doesn’t tell anyone, but being his father’s son, he loves tinkering with programs, although hacking would be a cruder. As an undergrad, he had pulled off many pranks on the web, including most memorably, a parade of velociraptors with pimp hats on the Vanity Fair website. He remembered being saved from night-jail by a particularly terrifying Cat Grant, who promptly offered him a job. He’s been off the hacking since.

But he feels the endorphins pumping into his brains as Kara’s sister directs him to an ancillary computer, instructing him to match the biodata of a feather (strange) with the millions of species on this planet and beyond. 

“You can do it the fastest, can’t you.” Alex doesn’t phrase it as a question, and WInn feels a similar pulse of desperation and worry. Kara, being swooped over by a giant, black figure that not even witnesses could recognize. 

“I need a direct livestream into Downtown NC, to inform people right now.” The aforementioned terrifying woman was unleashing her worst upon a very irked Vasquez. 

“No, ma’am. Alien contingencies and Non’s army considered, it is not a good idea to let people know Supergirl is missing.” Vasquez calmly explains, eyes pressed to the DEO screens. “Schott Jr, any news?” She barks. 

Shoving the irritation at being called that aside, he replies. “Yes. it’s the weirdest DNA I’ve ever seen. It’s like out of Jurassic Park. It has a mixture of human, reptillian and..” His eyes widened. 

“What?” Vasquez demanded, striding over to his shoulder. 

“Kryptonian,” he mumbled. The whole headquarters hushed, the irregular beeping of the computers an erratic heartbeat. 

The shining words of NON appearing in Helvetica confirmed their fears. 

\-- 

Despite her public status as a truth teller, Cat Grant hates ugly truths. She would rather disguise, warp, pat it down for the blinkered-eyed masses to absorb. Years of grime and filth uncovering in the business has told her to double-check every ‘fact’ emerging about the geopolitical situation, or Kate Middleton’s new diaper sponsorship. 

That kind of distrust served her well for twenty-three years. Now, she hopes to whatever deity deigns to hear her that the Superpal photojournalist was right.

“She will be fine,” James Olsen reassures her, eyes kind. She wants to scratch that expression off his face, frustrated how easily everyone around Kara Zor-El bought the heroic, indestructible act, how she inspired this naive, blind faith in even her closest friends.

They haven’t seen her broken, down on her knees and swearing fealty. They haven’t seen Supergirl weak.

“She,” she venomously replies, pacing, eyes never leaving the CatCo live-feed of carnage inflicted on the city in front of her. “Will not be anything until I see her wholesome, bland face billowing in front of me. Comprendo, Olsen?”

Silence. Cat whipped around. She realized the silence wasn’t just emerging from the man behind her, but instead a strange hush fell into the office. “Olsen?” she repeated.

James stared through her, his kind eyes now glassy. “Myriad will rise.” He intones, echoes of all of her employees responding in kind.

They stand up and march ahead to some asinine goal. Cat Grant pinches her nose.

Of course, it had to be her empire that devolves into an alien mind-controlled army.   
Lois had it much better.

-

The supposed savior lands immediately onto her office, and Cat wrestles with the urge to slap or embrace her out of worry. She banishes both aside as she saunters ahead from her personal elevator, trying to choke back the tears of seeing her Carter, mindless, staring into his laptop screen with alien symbols. 

“Keira,” she spitefully swivels across, “Call Harrison Ford and tell him I’m flattered, but once and for all, I do not date older men.” The jibe at her romantic prospects was a bit low, and she notices in her periphery Supergirl twisting her face in disgust. 

The superheroine clears her throat. “Oh,” Cat whips around, as if the end of the world was not nigh. “Supergirl, do we have a 9am?” 

Kara looks thirty seconds on the verge of a severe breakdown, but so is Cat Grant, who makes a career out of poker faces. 

“You’re not under mind control,” and the need that flits across Supergirl’s face compels Cat to distractedly tap at her phone, as if she could process WiFi in National City’s largest solar storm. 

Cat Grant realized quickly, by whatever divine intervention, why she had the privilege to keep her autonomy over her mental state. Kara was once again near her breaking point, and Cat- Cat will make sure she saves all of them, including Carter. 

God-damn it, if facades are what the world must see, they are what Supergirl needs to keep her delicate mental state from devolving into hysteria. 

“Ms. Grant, please listen to me. Everyone in this city has mind control, and they’re acting like Automatons. Haven’t you noticed?”

Save Supergirl, she reminds herself firmly and feigns surprise. 

-

Maxwell Lord swoops in to save them in all his white-male glory, and Cat is suddenly relieved about the two million seed funding she supplicated him two decades ago, when Lord was merely a mom-and-pop start up. 

“Clearly I don’t have ion-blockers, yet I don’t seem subjected to mind control.” She drawls, and Max stalks up to her, a tender hand on her cheek to brush away her curls. The move sickens her to her stomach, but she smiles demurringly, glancing over at Supergirl, whose jaw was now locked tightly. Ah.

“I get it. The earrings you sent last night.” Except she taught they came from another caped crusader, an unusually thoughtful gift in the midst of her fury at her disappearance.   
Cat tries to ignore how her subsequent off-hand comment about her assistant sends a sharp look of hurt across Kara’s face. In character, she must go on. 

They yell a bit more at each other, Supergirl hiding behind her wholesome, Girl Scout compulsions and Maxwell puffing his chest in his utilitarian high ground. Cat wondered how a tech tycoon and an alien from an advanced civilisation could devolve to such primitive displays of power, in such a pressing hour. 

Except Non arrives and Cat notices how Supergirl shifts a little closer to stand in front of her. Cat wants to scream at the sight of her employees throwing themselves off the ledge, Non pushing Supergirl to her limits - taunting her ability to save, her one deserved superpower. 

So Cat really doesn’t think it’s a surprised when Kelsey, on the verge of commiting suicide, turns and fiercely grabs her in a chokehold, and Supergirl is too horrified to think, to save. 

“Choose, Kara Zor-El,” his impossibly cruel voice booming over her skyscraper. 

Not again, Cat thinks warily, as she is thrown off her own building. 

-

She is saved. This time, Cat feels the breath rattling from her superheroine’s chest as she is carried, crushed against the frame of James Olsen and her IT assistant, and she wants to laugh at the humbling absurdity of the situation. She feels the chill, thinking was because whiplash at first, but realizes they’re the tears dripping down from Kara’s face in icy cold streaks. 

Supergirl drops the others to the side, but clutches on to Cat for five more terrifying seconds. She inhales the sulfur and sweat and the rough patch of her House of El crest, closing her eyes tightly underneath her cape.

“Mine,” the otherworldly creature gasps forcefully, eyes glowing red as she shoots lasers into the sky as warning. “Non, you will not take everything from me.” Her voice is lower, tinged with an alien accent, a war cry more than a demand. 

Cat tries not cling to Supergirl like she is nothing but. 

-

“When I almost died the first time, do you know what I thought?” Cat whispers, staring at the City she will soon lose. Supergirl stands too far away, consumed by guilt and an inner maelstrom, and Cat Grant is done pretending. Cat feels the heat of her gaze lightly upon her face, and continues, wistfully. 

“I thought, this woman was going to kill me and I never even kissed her,” She smiled slightly.

“Really,” Kara supplicates, her eyes still bleak at the prospect of genocide. It was a heavy word that both of the women were trying to dance around, finding no escape in an impossible bind. This would be another burden they both shared, the weight of the world and its bright, burning aspirations reduced to cinders because of their actions. 

“I wonder how many of them will die in Max’s moronic attempt to save the city,” Cat bluntly states, seeing Kara flinch in response. 

“What would have me do,” Supergirl implores outright, saying the words she’s been begging Cat all evening. 

“Do something better,” She demands, “Than radiating the city and killing thousands of people.” Supergirl deflates, Atlas on the verge of shrugging off his burden. She stands, willing herself to be strong for the City, for the woman she-

“I know you are scared. I am too. So is Max, so is Non for that matter, but somebody has to have the courage to stand up even though they are afraid.” 

She stood up, “You taught me that goodness will prevail,” her tongue curled around the word they don’t dare name, even now when everything faces destruction. “And because of you, I started letting people in.”

“I even let in my assistant Keira, who let me have a relationship with my son again,” Thank you, she means to say, for every thoughtfully heated latte and lettuce wrap, every smile that thawed her small heart. 

“Now I can’t tell you what to do, Supergirl, but if you’ve taught me anything, you have taught me that hope is stronger than fear.” She stares at the House of El crest, sees a possibility that rests low in her stomach and sustains her, pure and bright.

“You’ve changed me.” She connects her gaze. “Now change everyone else.” 

Kara stares at her as if she’s a new cosmic revelation, and blurts out her plan to save them all. 

-

One more kiss could have sufficed, Cat thinks despite herself, running her fingers through the dusty hole of her long extinct radio production studio.

In the midst of the emergency, Cat is slightly disappointed. She wanted to show Kara one day her brain-child during most of her twenties, the laughter and gossip, show her a world that was almost as bright as when Kara entered it. 

She shakes the cobwebs and the sentimentality away and gets briskly to business. She smooths and picks at the rubble clinging to Supergirl’s chest and determinedly ignores how soft Kara’s eyes become as she gently removes a speck of dirt from her cheek. 

Maxwell Lord pauses his tinkering to throw a smarmy line at the both of them, but Cat ignores him. 

Ten minutes later, Cat stares in awe at the speech that rescues them all, with words and an unshakeable belief so genuine, Myriad shatters and splinters. 

She lets out a dry sob in relief. Carter was safe. 

Cat Grant saved Supergirl. 

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, fitting Supercat into the season finale was HARD. I hoped you liked this!

**Author's Note:**

> Soo, my first foray into this fandom! Anyone who feels like they can contribute by being my beta, I would really appreciate it. As well as some reviews!


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